Thursday, February 19, 2004

Thinking about Ronald Johnson, as so many other folks are doing these days, I came across this piece, "Hurrah for Euphony: Dedicated to Young Poets". It retrospectively becomes the source for the name of my teaching blog, too. I will point my students toward it. Some wonderfully aphoristic sentences: "Content finds Form, as a leopard prey"; "Face the sun, your shadow will be sharper"; "Let sound gender sense"; "Learn to use words first—later you'll have ideas"; "Sometimes the hand has an eye in the palm, as the American Indians remind us. Grab a frontier!"; ". . . Pound, H.D., W.C.W., Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and Lorine Niedecker all leave you on your own horse, but teach you how to ride"; and—I will dedicate this one to my friend Richard—"Be an enthusiast."

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